Photo of MIA Is a Fake, Pentagon Asserts

A lengthy Pentagon investigation into a widely publicized photograph that purportedly proved an American serviceman who disappeared in Laos during the Vietnam War is alive has determined that the man in the photo is a German national, officials confirmed Thursday.

Pentagon officials said they will cooperate with the Justice Department, which is conducting an investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing by Jack Bailey, the POW-MIA hunter who produced the photograph.

Bailey’s photograph, which was reputed to show Donald Gene Carr Jr., an Army Special Forces officer who vanished in combat July 6, 1971, is Gunther Dittrich, a German national who lived in Laos and is an inmate in Germany’s Hanau Prison.

In an interview, Bailey, 68, a retired Air Force flier from Garden Grove, vowed to continue his search for Carr and other missing Americans and denied that he knowingly participated in a fraud. Long a controversial figure in the POW-MIA crusade, Bailey had raised more than $3.3 million for his cause over eight years before focusing on the Carr case.

Suspicions about Bailey’s photograph, as well as other purported POW-MIA evidence, had prompted some members of Congress and families of some MIAs to call for a criminal investigation of Bailey and other POW sleuths.

“They want a scapegoat. They want to discredit anyone and everyone, and they’re doing a great job of it,” Bailey said.

The photograph of a grinning middle-aged man who Bailey claimed was Carr was publicized last summer during a flurry of renewed interest in questions concerning more than 2,200 Americans who vanished during the Vietnam War.

The photo was considered especially intriguing because of the quality of the print and the striking resemblance to photos of the young Carr. Bailey said that his Laotian contact who took the photo had told him the man’s name was “Gar” months before he located photographs of Carr.

A technical comparison of photographs by a forensic expert sympathetic to the POW-MIA cause concluded that the images were of the same man at different stages of life. Some of Carr’s relatives reached the same conclusion.

Investigators with the Defense Intelligence Agency traveled with Bailey to Laos in an effort to determine the identity of the man in the photograph. But evidence mounted that the photo depicted a German national who often lived in Laos.

In recent news broadcasts, an ABC News team that accompanied Bailey on his journeys identified the man as Dittrich. When it was suggested that his evidence was bogus, Bailey shoved a village woman and punched the ABC correspondent.

Air Force Capt. Sam Grizzle said Thursday that Pentagon officials found Dittrich in a German prison. Dittrich--who reportedly was convicted of smuggling exotic birds--identified himself as the man in two photos possessed by Bailey and recalled they had been taken three years earlier.

“Mr. Dittrich stated he knew nothing about the photo being linked to Capt. Carr or Jack Bailey. When told of the investigation, he wrote a note to the family of Capt. Carr expressing his concern for their anguish,” a Pentagon statement said.

Pentagon officials said the Carr family was notified of their findings before they released the news publicly.

Bailey accused Pentagon officials and ABC of conspiring to embarrass him. “The whole thing was a setup,” Bailey charged. “They want to shoot any messenger involved in this issue.”